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Sometimes I don’t trust my own judgement. Here is one such moment.

I have recently started working for the Netherlands Architecture Institute, together with Radna Rumping and Michiel van Iersel. We are preparing a public programme on architecture, urban communities and Rotterdam during the summer. The formula is pretty straightforward: we look at the current exhibitions and events, scan the public calendar of Rotterdam, and try to come up with productive connections between the two, with the aim to open up the institution to a wide-ranging plethora of subcultures and alternative communities inhabiting Rotterdam.

What has happened since we started working in Rotterdam is that quite a lot of people suggest the most wonderful examples of architecture for our programme. Some of these are more conceptual, like this platform-village at an abandoned Munich train station by art and architecture office morePlatz. Others are more playful, like the Raincar by artist Olaf Mooij. And all of them are incredibly encouraging for our investigation of what to do in Rotterdam during the summer.

Today, artist Berend Strik told me about a project of a friend, the artist Mary Ellen Caroll. It is called prototype 180, and it was an “urban alteration that makes architecture perform” that took place in a suburb of Houston in 2010. What Carroll did, was to buy a house that had been boarded up for years and rotate it and the land 180 degrees. You can watch the performance on the video below. And you can read more about the project here, here, here and here.

I think it is an amazing artwork. I thought it was when Berend told me, and I did when I saw the photos and the video. I like her idea about re-imagining how we live and how we use our space in the built environment. But somehow because of all the words she uses in explaining the work, I started to dislike it. 

That feeling has now passed. Writing about it, and about the other works, exorcised my demons.

I have been listening a lot to former Ann Arbor and now New York producer Laurel Halo recently. She came to attention with a series of eps last year, released by amongst others Hippos in Tanks, the boutique electronic music label from LA, once home to Hype Williams.

Her debut album Quarantine is now available on Spotify, and will be released later this month on Hyperdub, Kode9’s vehicle for posteverything music.

Halo’s music has that weirdly addictive atemporal vibe as that of artists like Kuedo, Oneohtrix Point Never and Hype Williams. Music that sounds like it was made in the 70s or 80s, but in a century far into the future.

Both Kuedo and Hype Williams have played at Viral Radio before, and OPN will play in my programme at North Sea Jazz this summer. I almost had Laurel Halo playing at Trouw in June, but unfortunately we couldn’t find a free date. Hopefully I can invite her to play here soon.

I have been listening non-stop promo copy of her album. Tracks like Thaw, Carcass and Morcom are just amazing, and the album as a whole is really that: an album as whole.

Last year it was Kuedo’s album Severant that blew me away, and this year Quarantine is up there, perhaps only battling it out with Clark’s Iradelphic. 

After Burial, Zomby and Rustie, Laurel Halo is another bombshell release by Hyperdub. I can’t wait to seeing her taking the world by storm this year.

Pre-order Quarantine now from Boomkat (“one of the most compelling debut albums we’ve heard this year”).